At National Park sites across the country, small signs are popping up at the entrances asking the public to keep an eye out for any negative references to American history.
It’s part of an executive order from President Trump issued on March 27, called the Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.
At the Rosie the Riveter visitor center, people learn about the contributions of the Homefront during WWII, and about the way women and minorities were being treated at the time.
A sign at the center now directs visitors to notify the National Park Service of any “signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”
“It seems like a clear attempt to whitewash history,” said Dennis Arguelles with the National Parks Conservation Association. “To erase narratives from the past that they feel don’t fit the narratives that they want to see portrayed, and probably most dangerously, omit aspects of our history that are really important for us to understand and learn from.”
The NPCA is a nonprofit that advocates for the National Parks. Arguelles said he believes the signs invite people to seek out things about history they would like to erase.
“We’re seeing this as an attempt to circumnavigate the authority of the Parks Service to tell these stories, to tell accurate history, and to make sure that we learn, particularly from the mistakes of the past,” he said.
But it is the National Park Service that is placing the signs at their sites.
“Well, in our view the Parks Service has no choice,” said Arguelles. “These directives are coming down from the administration, from the Department of Interior, from the Secretary. And in many cases, they don’t have a choice but to go along with this.”
The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, the site commemorating a massive explosion during WWII that killed 320 Black sailors and the 256 who were court martialed for refusing to return to work, is also under the Department of the Interior.
“We will not allow our history to be erased, regardless of orders, policies, or political tides … These histories are not separate or optional — They are central to understanding who we are as a nation,” the Port Chicago Alliance told CBS News Bay Area in a statement.
Another sign is located at the Manzanar National Historic Site where Japanese Americans were interned during WWII. The imprisonment of innocent Americans is the entire purpose of the monument, so is it really possible to have a site like Manzanar and not have some negative history assigned to it?
“I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s possible,” said Cal State East Bay Ethnic Studies Professor Dr. Nicholas Baham. “But at the same time, the understanding of the things that we’ve done is not, in and of itself, a negative process. It is not a process that is designed to make people feel bad about being American. It’s a process that’s designed to make us better as Americans.”
Baham said he is also disturbed by the fact that the Parks Service can no longer even see the comments that the people are submitting.
“I don’t know what kind of system that sets up,” he said. “Other than one that creates a sense of distrust between visitors to the park, American citizens, and people who work at the park.”
The president’s directive also criticizes the removal of various statues and monuments during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. And he directed that the National Park Service reinstate them wherever possible.
In his order, President Trump wrote, “This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
But Dr. Baham said it is precisely the founding principles of the nation, and its struggle to uphold them, that has always provided America with its moral compass.
“What happens to this country if we erase the history of enslavement at any of our National Park sites? At the plantations that Jefferson or Washington owned? Listen, really this is quite insulting to the American people. It assumes that you can’t critically evaluate both the good and the bad.”
CBS News Bay Area reached out to the National Park Service about the signs, but has not heard back.
